


Envy

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-24
Updated: 2007-08-24
Packaged: 2019-01-19 13:01:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12410784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Ginny Weasley-- who had always proudly thought herself to be a friendly, outgoing, congenial sort of girl-- the sort of girl who could get on with anyone, really-- had to fight valiantly to like Hermione Granger.





	Envy

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Author's Note: This is a brief character study on Ginny, who, in my opinion, is by far the most underwritten "main" character in the entire series. I've always had trouble liking Ginny simply because I've never really felt like I got the chance to know her. I _want_ to like her-- but, honestly, I can't really manage to feel much of anything for her. I thought it would be interesting to try to imagine how Ginny was feeling the duration of the seventh book, stuck at Evil!Hogwarts and feeling left out of the loop yet again. Picking the brain of a character I have absolutely no feelings for was not easy, but here is the end result.

***

Ginny Weasley-- who had always proudly thought herself to be a friendly, outgoing, congenial sort of girl-- the sort of girl who could get on with anyone, really-- had to fight valiantly to like Hermione Granger.

Ginny had never found herself lacking in self-confidence; she had always, in fact, rather valued her honesty with herself, her ability to judiciously recognize both her positive and negative traits. The problem was, she knew, that one of her negative traits just happened to be that Hermione Granger could somehow manage to make Ginny feel like an overgrown, volatile two-year-old without ever opening her mouth.

Ginny knew she was smart-- maybe even of above average intelligence, if she wanted to be generous with herself-- but she certainly couldn't memorize an entire text on the first rapid read, nor could she muster up the motivation to crack open a school book even a minute before the summer term had ended. She didn't have Hermione's photographic memory either, and she simply couldn't share Hermione's scarily obsessive ambition to know everything there was to know about, well, everything.

Ginny also knew she had plenty of friends-- she knew she had more than Hermione, at any rate-- but she didn't have any one she was even remotely as close to as Hermione was to Harry and Ron. Their interactions flowed with a seamless ease that both fascinated and infuriated Ginny. They finished each other's sentences with rapid, impossible to keep up with regularity, and, Ginny couldn't help but notice, they were somehow able to hold entire conversations using only their eyebrows, a bizarre gift she had previously only ever known Fred and George to possess. Perhaps, she reasoned, they didn't mean to exclude everyone surrounding them so completely-- but they did.

She knew that Neville, at least, shared her sentiments on this subject. These days, when they weren't wreaking political havoc throughout the castle and when they didn't have Snape or the Carrows breathing quite literally down their necks, they often sat morosely discussing Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Neville too had always felt like he was irrevocably on the outside looking in.

"They're the closest thing I've got to best mates," he'd whispered one night, both of them crouched down low behind a suit of armor, wands at the ready. "But I'm pretty sure they don't even notice I'm there half the time."

It was his tone of calm acceptance that had disheartened Ginny most, and she had shoved Neville forward down the darkened corridor with a bit more force than was probably necessary.

Perhaps, Ginny mused, she had a bit more experience with boys than Hermione. But then, she certainly didn't have international Quidditch stars knocking down her door or anyone as doggedly (and stupidly, in Ginny's opinion) devoted to her as her ponce of a brother was to Hermione.

Sometimes when she was feeling particularly spiteful, she even told herself that she was _prettier_ than Hermione and that this somehow mattered-- though this line of thought only ever led to her immediately feeling like an awful person, which in turn only made her hate Hermione more.

But what made Ginny resent Hermione most was that Hermione had Harry, and Ginny, quite simply, did not. It didn't matter how many times she kissed him or made him laugh or how many times he shook his head at her and told her she made him feel like a different person; he would never confide in her the way he confided in Hermione because the Harry Ginny knew wasn't the Harry who spent all his waking moments plotting how best to thwart Voldemort. Harry told Ginny she made him feel _normal_ \-- told her this as if it were the most amazing gift in the world-- and that's all he ever was with her: a normal, happy adolescent boy. She thought that if Harry would just open his eyes a bit, he would see that Ginny could love both Harry the regular teenage boy and Harry Potter, Undesirable Number One, the Boy Who Lived, the only person who could stop He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named once and for all-- but that Harry usually only took the time to send her fleeting, passing, distracted glances. That Harry was always too busy Saving the World to spare much thought for Ginny Weasley, his best mate's little sister.

Ginny felt a dedication to the Order's cause and Voldemort's demise that she knew was genuine-- she wasn't _that_ shallow, after all-- but staring across the Gryffindor table at Colin Creevey's bruised and battered face, it wasn't Snape or the Carrows or even Voldemort who were making her insides squirm with a hatred so strong she wasn't sure she could stand it; it was Hermione Granger she felt a pure, undiluted hatred for-- Hermione, because she was out there right now-- wherever _there_ was-- with Harry, and Ginny was stuck at Hogwarts, poking like a drone at her cold eggs and watching her fellow classmates suffer with an almost apathetic eye. 


End file.
